One-Hundred and Ninety-Four Days
by Bassair
Summary: After six months of peace talks go horribly wrong, Clarke is taken prisoner as a medic by the grounders for another six. (Told in alternating timelines: the peace talks and the months of captivity. Written for the 12 days of Christmas for my best friend.)
1. Month 7

A/N: This is already complete, I'm just editing it to post it. It should be posted to completion over the next couple of weeks. It totals around 12,000 words, but may end up a little more after edits. Some chapters are very short, some are longer.

* * *

Bellamy's lungs were burning and his throat was aching. His legs felt like they were going to give out any moment but still he ran, stumbling and scrambling as he tried to make it back to the drop ship before his body gave up on him.

He'd barely made it out of their camp, they were going to kill him for his escape attempt (not attempt. Success. His escape _success_) and _oh god_ what were they going to do to—

He crashed into camp, bouncing off two walls and Jasper before he finally came to a halt in front of someone he could barely see for his blurred vision. It was his voice he identified as Raven as she said, "Bellamy?"

"They took Clarke!" His voice rasped around a wheeze and he wasn't sure his words were even understandable, let alone coming out in the right order. His suspicions were confirmed when a very confused and Raven pressed a water skin to his lips and he drank in desperation until it was empty, then shoved it away, far more violent than he intended to be. "They took Clarke," he repeated.

"Who?" she said. "Who took Clarke?"

He felt like shaking her and screaming because what kind of _stupid question was that _but he'd used up all his energy on the run back and instead he bent double, hands on his knees, panting, gasping and wheezing at the ground beneath his feet. "The grounders! They— it—" A wave of dizziness overwhelmed him and he staggered forwards, stumbling and then crashing to the floor, rolling onto his side.

"Bellamy, are you hurt?!" That felt like a dumb question somehow.

"Uhh..." He rolled onto his back, which caused a jolt of agony and a snapping sound he was pretty sure was a bad thing. Within seconds, Raven was shouting at the top of her lungs.

"You... Did you run all the... You've been _shot!_" She rolled him onto his front, one hand pressing to the wound he'd opened up further with his movements and the other holding him still.

"They took Clarke," he gasped, like that was an explanation for being shot and running all the way back from a grounder camp with no water and no breaks. "They took—" His vision went black but he could still hear Raven talking, and then Chancellor Griffin's voice shouting about needing to get the arrow out. She was okay, that was good. Clarke would be so—

Wait.

Oh, no.

He shouted in agony as the arrow was snapped again and yanked from his gut with a skilled hand, and he fought to not cry in pain as he was put on a stretcher. His vision was still black and he went deaf next to match it as unconsciousness rescued him from his pain.


	2. Month 1

It was a crash which woke Clarke from her latest night of nightmare-filled sleep and she rolled off her bunk in seconds, already-booted feet hitting the floor as she stood up and scrambled out of her tent.

"What happened?!" she said as several dead bodies and Jasper, Jasper poor Jasper, was carried in, an arrow in his neck. She wanted to scream, wanted to check on the people she cared most about now and damn the rest, but the part of her that always looked after everything was the part that said, "Get him to the drop ship, do _not_ take that arrow out, do you hear me?" A few people nodded, bustling him off, and she turned to Finn as he came in, allowing herself a precious few minutes to find out what had happened in the latest chapter of this endlessly bloody war.

"We were doing a patrol and they just jumped us," he breathed. He was bleeding in several places and she'd have to deal with his wounds too once Jasper was stable, but he wasn't critical and her mother's voice in her head said that critical always came first in times like these. "We didn't see them coming but we won. We won."

"You call this winning?" Clarke said, voice losing strength. "How many dead is this?"

"Three," Finn said and swallowed hard. "Three..."

"That's too many." Clarke turned away, straight into Bellamy, who wrapped her up in his arms. This had become something they did (something he did): he'd notice she was upset and he'd just hold her, offer a few moments of calm, comfort and peace in the midst of a war.

"Take a breath, go look after Jasper," he said once he'd let go of her and the noise of the camp and people panicking came rushing back into her ears. "I'll come find you later when I've dealt with this." She was so grateful she almost cried but she simply didn't. She needed him to find her, to help make this okay again.

She nodded her shaky agreement and turned away, making her way across the camp to save the life of one of her dearest friends.

Didn't her mother always say to not operate on people you were emotionally compromised by? Something about shaking hands.

Her hands didn't shake. She didn't have the luxury of not working on her friends down here. They were all her friends and Jasper needed her.

They _all_ needed her.

* * *

It was more than twenty-four hours of hard work and no sleep later that she finally sat down on her cot, burying her face in her clean hands. Logically, they smelled like soap, but the only scent she could detect on her skin was Jasper's blood. She knew it wasn't real, rather some kind of sleep deprived hallucination, but that didn't make it pleasant and the coppery tang clung to her nostrils long after it was gone from the air.

"Hey." She wasn't sure when Bellamy had entered her tent or when he'd crouched in front of her, or when he'd taken her hands in his and held them close, the pads of his calloused thumbs rubbing against her palms. "You saved him, Clarke," he said, his deep voice low and gentle. "You're shaking..."

She hadn't realised, didn't know even now that she was. She wasn't sure why she'd be shaking, the surgery was over, Jasper was in recovery. Her mother had come from Camp Jaha to help. Why would she be shaking?

"I can't do this anymore." Oh, she was crying. That explained the shaking. "I can't. Bellamy, it's too much. Who's going to be next? Everyone is going to die and I-I can't do it, I can't watch our friends die. I can't lose any more people. They're just kids fighting a pointless war..."

"It's not pointless," he said. "It's not. It's not pointless to defend ourselves from attacks and that's exactly what we're doing. _They_ keep attacking _us_."

"We're on their land, Bellamy," she said, voice shaking as hard as her hands. "We'd do the same if someone tried to take our land, kill our people..."

"We'd at least talk to them first, you know we would. We didn't try to kill their people. _They _tried to kill Jasper, don't you remember?" He sighed. "Clarke, do you think this would stop if we moved? What're the odds we landed on the _only populated spot on Earth?_ Low. The odds are really damn low. There's going to be grounders wherever we go, but here? They already know us and one day they're going to figure out that we're not dying, or giving up, or _leaving_ and they're going to want a ceasefire, maybe even peace or to be allies, because we have guns and we have determination and we're not going to give up or give in."

She took a deep but shaky breath and nodded, closing her eyes and holding on tight to his hands like if she let go of them she'd float away, or sink into the earth and disappear. "Right! Yeah... yeah." She shook her head, trying to clear it of all the negative thoughts clouding her mind, trying to simply believe Bellamy, to believe everything he said. "I should sleep."

He pulled his hands away at her words and all of a sudden she felt cold and alone again, all her calm receding with the warmth of his body. He stood up and she stretched out on her bunk on her back, closing her eyes and trying to calm again. His heavy footfalls signalled he was leaving her tent, and before she could supress it she'd said, "Bellamy?"

"Yeah?" She didn't open her eyes, not sure she'd be brave enough to ask him for what she wanted if she looked at him, if she could see his intense brown eyes gazing at her. She could tell by his voice he'd turned to look at her and she caught herself wondering how she looked stretched out on her bed in her underwear and a loose, ragged t-shirt she had to in. She wondered if he liked how she looked.

Her voice was almost too quiet to hear as she asked, "Will you stay?"

A long silence followed, so she clarified her words with, "I'm not sleeping well at the moment. I'm… one eye open, you know? Sleeping light makes me feel safe because I wake to so much as a mouse going through my tent, but... I wake a lot." She licked her lips but didn't open her eyes or look at him. She didn't want to. "If you were here with me... I might be able to sleep through the night and I... need that. I'm going insane from lack of sleep." It was the most honest she'd been in days, weeks even.

His footfalls started again, striding towards her, and she scooted to the side of her cot, up against the wall of the tent and away from the middle, leaving room for him to lie down. Her bed rocked as he sat down on it and she heard him take his boots off. It made sense, boots were hard to sleep in and they'd make his feet sore if he left them on. She'd learned that from leaving her own on, but still she did it. The bunk moved some more and she felt his shoulder knock hers as he lay down next to her. "Ow."

"What?" She still didn't look.

He made a grumbling sound. "I'm lying on the edge of the cot, the wood bit. What do you think?" Even the low grunt of his voice made her feel better.

She rolled onto her side, scooting along the cot until she was right on the edge and he shifted too, sliding into the middle.

There was a couple of moments of silence and then his grumbly voice said, "Aren't you on it now?"

"Nah," she lied.

"For fuck's sake," he said and she felt his forearm as it came to rest against her head, nudging at her skull. She opened her eyes, confusion overwhelming her desire to not admit to the fact she'd begged for a Bellamy Blake Baby Sitting Service, looking across at him in the half-light of the evening.

"What?"

"We'll take up less room if we disregard each other's personal space for a night." She didn't move, trying to figure out why he was speaking so formally and translate what he meant and that seemed to bug him because he sighed like he'd had enough of everything she'd ever done. He probably had. "And," he continued after a brief moment, "if you can feel my arms around you, I'd wager it'll help you sleep. You'll know I'm here even when you're asleep."

She moved into his arms like her body was on autopilot, like it knew what she wanted more than her mind did, and he rolled, wrapping his strong arms around her with his back to the world, protecting her from it. She didn't usually need protecting, was usually the first one to shout that she was capable of protecting _herself_ damnit, but tonight all she wanted, all she _needed_ \- and oh, god, how she needed it tonight - was his arms around her and his bigger, stronger, tougher body protecting hers, which felt so small and frail and fragile today, battered and beaten from defending her heart from the world that kept trying to break it.

"Thank you," she said and her words slurred with tiredness, voice cracking a little.

His face pressed to the top of her head and it took her a second to realise he'd kissed her crown. She hoped her hair tasted cleaner than it felt but it probably didn't. "Just get some sleep," he said, his voice softer than usual, not its usual low grunt.

Her only reply was to fall asleep in his arms.


	3. Month 8

There was no way into the grounder camp.

"_Bellamy_."

He couldn't find a way _in_.

"_Kiss me again_."

He could taste her lips, feel her skin under his hands but there was still no way in, the walls too high and the guards too strong, everything blurry and muddled in front of his eyes.

"_No, not there..._"

Her laugh echoed in his ears.

"_Oh, god, yes. There. There... there... oh, Bellamy, fuck, yes..._"

It turned into a scream, pleasure at first and then fear.

Her skin disappeared from his hands and she disappeared in a flash of pink and yellow.

"_Let her go!_" he bellowed.

"Bellamy!"

He jerked upright to Finn, hands on his shoulders. His heart pounded. "Wh-What?"

"You were dreaming," Finn said, taking his hands back and swallowing.

"Oh." Nightmare. "What time is it?"

"It's early," Finn said. "Were you dreaming of—"

"Yeah." Bellamy scrubbed a hand over his head. "Any news?"

Finn shook his head. "The grounder camp is abandoned," he said. "There's no tracks, no sign... We have no idea where they are, where she is."

Bellamy swallowed hard. "Any bodies?" he grunted.

"No." Finn watched him. "No, no graves, no bodies. Just empty."

Bellamy nodded. That had to mean Clarke was still alive. There was no point killing her and not leaving her body as a message. There was no point at _all_.

"We'll find her," Finn said.

"Get out of my tent."

Finn paused. "What?"

"I want to sleep and I can't do that with you standing over me," Bellamy said and dropped onto his back with a grunt. "Wake me if you get a damn lead."

Finn huffed something, turned and strode out of the tent

Bellamy looked up at the cloth ceiling, eyes glazing over. He wasn't sleeping. He hadn't been for a long while. Grounders kept attacking, night and day, and his bed was cold and empty without Clarke beside him.

He launched out of bed, grabbing his things and striding out, across the camp and into Clarke's. She could yell at him once she was home.

He stretched out on her bed and groaned quietly, inhaling the scent of her and closing his eyes. He could pretend she was here, that's what he could do.

He could pretend.

* * *

She was sure it had been eighteen days since she ate. She knew that twenty-one days - three whole weeks - was pushing it, that she could die if she didn't get food after that time, and she knew it had been eighteen days - she'd seen eighteen sun rises and they told her anyway, they wanted her to know how long she'd been here.

Worse still she'd had all but no water, just enough to keep her alive, and she was feeling the effects: headache, tired, dizzy. Her mouth and eyes felt like they were made of sand and stone, not flesh and fluid.

She was chained up in an X position, her legs and arms spread almost like they'd done to Lincoln once upon a time. They'd checked her for weapons and tools, taken everything sharp off her, but they'd left her clothed and even left her simple hair tie in her hair, holding it off her face. She supposed it made it easier for them to watch her lose her shit from lack of food and water.

It made sense that this was what they were doing, breaking her by leaving her in solitary confinement, making noise so she couldn't sleep and starving and dehydrating her. It made that kind of sick sense that hung over her, the knowledge that it was an effective strategy and that at some point it'd work and she'd break.

She closed her eyes, adjusting her stance a little to lean her weight differently on her bindings. She closed her eyes, thinking of Bellamy, of Finn, Raven, her mom, all the reasons she had to _not break_, not give in or give information over.

She trembled a little, body trying to cry without tears available to fall, and pulled against her restraints. She'd do so much differently if she had another chance.


End file.
